THE MERCY SEAT
LIBERTY AND LOVE #117
The Ark of the Covenant was covered by a lid called the Mercy Seat. We have much to learn from this object concerning our relationship with God. God is “rich in mercy” (Eph. 2:4) and has always been so. We serve a merciful God who saves us because of his kindness.
God said that he would center his presence on the Mercy Seat when it came to dealing with his people (Ex. 25:22). We should keep in mind that beneath the Mercy Seat were the stone tablets upon which were written the Ten Commandments. These stones were a perpetual reminder that none of the people could be made right with God on the basis of law-keeping (Gal. 3:10). The Ten Commandments represented condemnation, for no one could keep the law good enough to be justified thereby, and so all stood condemned.
The Mercy Seat covered the law. That is important to consider from an eternal salvation standpoint. God’s view of the condemnation of the law was “blocked,” so to speak, by the Mercy Seat. This certainly points to the fact that “our lives are hidden with Christ in God” as the New Testament teaches us concerning our relationship with God through Christ.
Consider that the High Priest annually sprinkled blood on the Mercy Seat on the Day of Atonement. This procedure was conducted first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. God sustained his righteousness, yet granted his mercy until the death of Christ happened, through which God accomplished an everlasting salvation. “For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him” (Heb. 9:24-28).
The mercy seat is therefore spoken of as an “atonement cover” (Heb. 9:5). It foreshadowed the blood of Christ, serving as an object lesson concerning the death Christ would die and the benefits sinners would receive from his sacrifice. What does the word translated “atonement cover” mean? What is atonement? In some translations we have the word “propitiation.” Jesus himself, for example, is our propitiation (1 John 2:2; 4:10). The word some translations call propitiation and some atonement means “an expiation, a means whereby sin is covered and remitted.”
What then is the means by which our sins are remitted? At the Last Supper Jesus said, “For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Matthew 26:28). Jesus achieved the remission or forgiveness of our sins by shedding his blood—i.e., dying for us. Therefore, he is the propitiation for our sins; he is the means by which our sins are remitted. So propitiation and atonement speak of the “place” where mercy is found.
The place of mercy is Christ himself. Paul declares that Christians have been “justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through the faith, in His blood” (Rom. 3:24-25).
